Tag Archives: PM Netanyahu’s failure of leadership

Within the contours of any proprietary company meeting, it is expected that what’s discussed within the confines of four walls never leave the premises. After all, professional due diligence mandates non-disclosure from attendees.

That being established, even more so, within security meetings it is forbidden to discuss (including with one’s intimate partner, though left unspoken) this and that, to the point of who was in attendance, let alone what was on the table. This understanding is not rocket science.

Regardless, even though high-level conferences, notably, Israel’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (a/k/a ICT….as it happens, several of my close associates are duly immersed within), often end up as “open source” via internet recordings, policy papers, etc., it doesn’t obviate the fact that “side engagements” are more common than not. And it is these off-the-record discussions which are key and core, that is, when it comes to what is really going down in the security arena.

Even more so, such is the case re intimate meetings between security folks and those of us who operate on its fringes. Again, understood?

To wit, it is up to these eyes and ears to decide which “droppings” can make their way to these pages (with the knowledge that it will crisscross up and down the internet), chiefly, to inform the public without PC sanitation – however, without giving away that which is forbidden.

On the other hand, a core component of my consultancyis to contribute independent findings by listening and learning (from the “masters”), afterwards, to reveal what the “boots on the ground” have evaluated sans operational giveaways. Yes, it is understood that this highly delicate arena is more than confusing to wade through for non-professionals, despite the heavy-lifting within.

Be that as it may, relative to Israel’s increasingly worsening security situation, said meetings have been such that they warrant as much disinfectant as possible. Resultant, there are several analyses from 2018 which are of particular import; direct lead-ins to the immediate unfolding disasters on the northern and southern fronts.

Still yet, as of Sunday’s (July 29, 2018) urgently put together meeting (as mentioned, placing aside this and that operational talk, emphasis placed), what exactly are certain high-level boots-on-the ground counter-terrorism/intel folks saying behind closed doors, in juxtaposition to the jive-talk put forth ala the IDF ‘s military censors – vis-a’-vis the grave situation (a/k/a “matzav”) at both fiery fronts? Though discoursed in Hebrew, the following is translated into concise English, and as close to their intent as possible:

If not for the fact that “Bibi” – for nine years – tolerated the intolerable, thus, allowing a massive build-up of Hezbollah forces/arms (this is despite this and that preemptive strikes) within a stone’s throw distance from Israel’s Lebanese front, the northern front would be infinitely less explosive. This is so because he (and his subordinates) has failed to learn basic strategic imperatives and lessons, some of which are explained in the aforementioned links. This truth is borne out by the absolute fact that Hezbollah – with assorted Shiite proxy forces as cover – coupled with Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, have parked themselves right on Israel’s Golan border with Syria!!

Not only that, they continued: the leadership’s schizophrenic actions toward the Brotherhood’s Hamas has been both a direct and contributory factor to its going from strength to strength. That instead of pummeling their terror forces into submission years ago, Netanyahu refused – and still refuses – to unshackle the IDF! In concert, continuously, he demoralizes the majority Zionist public by conveying to Hamas and the nation at large: “quiet will be met with quiet” – (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtOEOXg8IjE&t=31s ), even as the south burns and rockets/missiles are fired at will! By so doing, not only is “Bibi” behaving immorally toward his own citizens, but he has given Hamas the operational upper hand to terrorize residents in the south, as if they are the ones in charge of the “matzav!” And in quite harsh and “indelicate” language (but cleaned up at these pages), said security folks intoned: how much longer will this insanity go on??

But hardly done, they went on: would a rational leadership allow truckloads of goods (even a mere parcel) to cross Israel’s borders (regardless of any and all international pressure to “be nice” to the Gazans, even though Israel “disengaged” from Gaza/Gush Katif in Aug. 2005) into the Hamas-run terror enclave, unless they surrender, once and for all?

Atop it all, they concluded: aside from genuflecting to the White House (be it Obama’s or Trump’s), Netanyahu has endangered the nation by relying upon “promises” made by Putin (all of which have been broken), that is, that Iran’s proxies would not come near the Golan! How could he have taken his word, even for a nanosecond? Again, in their words: “Bibi” (the buck stops with him) is incapable of “seeing from there to here”, even as he opines to the public that he knows best!

So, aside from the disgust and outright concern from hard-charging counter-terrorism/intel operatives, this is my unadulterated bottom line from Sunday’s meeting: as we say in Israel, sach ha’kol, at the end of it all, it is impossible to blow smoke up the as*es of those whose “boots are on the ground” and unafraid to tell the truth – at least, behind closed doors.

Indeed, while it is forbidden to tape anything which is said in these meetings, suffice to state: certain security folks ( let’s call them “stand-up” guys) are relying that the true gravity of the situation will get out – as opposed to the spin put forth by Netanyahu’s mouthpieces via the IDF’s military censors. Of course, anything which smacks of operational plans, well, as always, that stays behind closed doors.

Most significantly, it cannot be overstated: despite all the macho posturing put forth by officialdom that they have “everything under control”, and that “deterrence” is working, Israel’s two fronts would hardly be in the most dire straits in decades – if not for “Bibi’s” glaring missteps, strategic miscalculations, and, most intrinsically, genuflection!

IT is not for nothing that this investigative journalist, an American-Israeli (who happens to live in Israel) whose expertise lies in Islamic militant jihad, pays special heed to the catapult of Allah’s Muslim Terrorists throughout the Mid East and alongside Israel’s borders. Ditto, re America’s security alike.

THAT being said, those who operate in this murky arena understand full well that relying on mainstream media for a truthful analysis is a fool’s errand. Not only that, Israel’s leftist media (and assorted mouth pieces) is no exception to this lying trend. Therefore, it is mandatory to confer with this and that outside source – non-beholden and non-restricted by outside interests – to weave together the geo-political picture, thus, zeroing in on the dangers at hand.

NOW, it must be stated that the public is trained to believe that their leaders have the nation’s best interests at heart, yes, their experts know how to “take care of business.” Hmm. If so, the core questions become: How could it be that PM Netanyahu, smartie that he is, followed HUSSEIN Obama’s lead in the Mid East theater, even though he is operating against Israel’s security interests? More specifically, how could he have left Hamas – the military arm of the Brotherhood Mafia, in tandem with assorted Gazan jihadi terror groups – standing after their 2014 summer-long missile blitzwhich blanketed all of Israel, thereby, leaving Israel’s southern border directly in their cross hairs? These are fair questions, aren’t they? So much so, they were duly addressed in an interview on March 17, 2015, election day, at Inquisitr via Can Israel Survive As The Jewish State?

WHICH brings us to this week’s “news”, that is, ISIS is poised on Israel’s Golan border and readying to pounce! But before we get to that, it must be noted that news was placed in quotes for more than good reason. In fact, this site warned about Israel’s encirclement, and placed the onus where it belonged. Let’s recap:

RECAPS:

ADDING fuel to the hottest fire, during the week of Dec. 20, 2014, this investigative journalist was burning up the phone lines, and meeting one contact after another “in the know”, relative to ISIS’s encirclement of Israel on the Golan border. In effect, this is precisely why the “news” below is hardly “news!” Its basis can be found at: Israel is encircled, Al Yarmouk Shuhada Brigades backed by U.S./CIA Officers and the IDF too! Yes, they pledged allegiance to ISIS and it was NOT a secret, but it was a knock-on effect of HUSSEIN Obama’s “rebels” smoke and mirror show.

ON July 2, 2015, it was further warned: ISIS is encircling Israel pincer-like, from the north and south; the poisonous fruits of Obama’s illegal Libyan war!

HOT on its heels, Aug. 6, 2015, another analysis was noted: HUSSEIN Obama’s sleigh-of-hand, as the much ballyhooed “rebels” are ISIS aligned and protected by U.S. air cover, as they directly endanger Israel!

AND so here we are almost a year and a half onward from the first recap, alas, EXACTLY what this site warned is due to explode! Trust, PM Netanyahu (and his lackeys and lapdogs) will certainly feign – shock…shock…how did this happen….blah, blah too.

This disastrous turn of events is illustrated by an exclusive picture obtained by DEBKAfile of an ISIS fighter unfurling the organization’s flag at one of the crossings which sports a Jordanian flag.

The picture taken the same day shocked the royal court and the Jordanian military command in Amman.

Our military sources report that an urgent conference was called at the Military Operations Command (MOC), north of Amman to devise measures for containing the Islamic State’s leap into more territory on the Syrian-Jordanian border. It was attended by Jordanian, American, Israeli, Saudi and UAE officers.

They voiced apprehension about three developments which give Daesh a substantial edge

1. A group of high ISIS officers traveled south from headquarters in Raqqa in the last few days, took command of the 3,000 fighters of the affiliated Yarmouk Brigades, and is now working to form a continuous jihadist enclave along Syria’s borders with Israel and Jordan, like the 90-kilometer ISIS strip blocking part of the Turkish border.

This enclave would directly threaten the Israeli Golan and northern Jordan.

2. When ISIS forces retreated last week from Palmyra, a group headed south, fetching up outside Jebel Druze without entering this mountain region. It is now feared that the jihadis are about to turn west toward the Israeli border and link up with the Yarmouk brigades. This would double the number of ISIS forces in southern Syria and make possible a major new assault on the Jordanian and Israeli borders.

3. The strengthening of ISIS forces in southern Syria has attracted some of the Syrian rebel groups fighting the Syria army to the jihadist flag and the Yarmouk Brigades. The largest militia to enlist recently is the Al-Muthana movement. Although its leaders deny taking an oath of allegiance or any other ties with ISIS, Al-Muthana is currently fighting alongside ISIS. This has sent a disturbing signal to the hundreds of other anti-Assad militias in the neighborhood.
Jordan has meanwhile stepped forward to stem this flow of strength to ISIS.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that Jordanian military intelligence officers specializing in guerrilla warfare have been infiltrating rebel-held areas in the South, especially Daraa, the regional hub, for the purpose of whipping rebel militias together into a front against ISIS. These officers have succeeded in setting up a joint war room with the three biggest rebel groups in the south, the Southern Front, Jaish Fatah al-Junub and Jaish al-Islam, for action under the direction of the MOC outside Amman.

On Monday, April 4, the joint force saw combat, when rebel forces under Jordanian commanders launched an attack to drive the ISIS forces back into their former corner in the narrow triangle near the meeting-point of the Syrian, Israeli and Jordanian borders. ISIS hit back with suicide bombers, who blew themselves up next to the Jordanian-led rebel assault force. It was the first time ISIS had unleashed suicide bombers so close to the Israeli border.

MIND you, ISIS is hardly a match for the Mid East’s strongest army, therefore, a salient question looms: Since they have been inching closer and closer to Israel’s borders over several years, why wasn’t the IDF – and all its attendant arms – tasked to blow their encampments to Allah’s hell and back? Surely, that would have been the rational pre-emptive move, ya think, instead of affording them the ability to tighten the noose from a much closer position and with ever more reinforcements and battle-hardened terror groups in tow! Déjà vu re Hamas’s southern encirclement….Hezbollah’s northern alike??

ALAS, many will opine that only Israel’s leaders know what’s what. Similarly, per the (failed) leadership’s ubiquitous fallback position, their tiresome refrain goes like this: “What we see from here, you don’t see from there.” O RLY??

BESIDES, why in G-d’s name should we trust that they have any idea how to protect the majority Jewish public, being that “Bibi” has been in power since 2009 (7 years, you do the math), yet, it was under his watch that he allowed Iran to go nuclear!

INDEED, isn’t it reasonable to posit that in relation to the most existential threat of all, Iran’s nuclear arming, that he followed HUSSEIN Obama’s marching orders to a tee, settling for this and that “set-backs” toward their death machine, as opposed to a full throttle, lawful pre-emption?

WOLFF BACHNER: And speaking of responsible world leaders, why isn’t the Prime Minster of Israel bringing up these serious issues with the nations involved in the peace process and especially with Obama and demanding an end to all military threats to Israel before Israel will negotiate again? Is he trying too hard to appease Obama and the various European talking heads, and by doing so, weakening Israel’s position even further in a peace process that is already an anti-Israeli charade?

ADINA KUTNICKI:It is this lock-step and debasing march which stopped him (during 9 years as PM, from 1996-1999 and 2009 -2015) from declaring victory over Hamas during the 2014 summer-long war, one which blanketed/blitzed the entire country with missile and rocket barrages. More indicting, instead of laying waste, years ago, to Iran’s mushrooming genocidal WMD program, he is still begging President Obama to lead the charge, knowing full well that he has no such intention. Chasing ghosts.

Inherently, he could have taken a page out of (the late) PM Menachem Begin’s playbook, when he defied President Carter and destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor. Now, as then, Washington issued threats to “cease and desist”, but one PM ignored said orders, while the other (continuously) caved. Statesmanship, or the lack thereof.

In the main, PM Netanyahu is best described as a “serial accommodator”, comparable to a badly battered wife who just can’t help herself from going back to her abuser, one last time, for more punishment. Now, others may tsk, tsk and opine: well, the POTUS is the big man in the arena, therefore, what can poor “Bibi” do but genuflect? Hogwash.

For the record, PM Menachem Begin didn’t have a problem executing what his mantle required of him; protecting Israel at ALL costs! Similarly, Israel’s first PM, David Ben-Gurion, gave Eisenhower the proverbial finger, when he launched a war in 1956 in concert with Britain and France against an increasingly belligerent Egypt. As always, Washington attempted to stay Israel’s hand. History repeats.

In furtherance to the above charge and indictment, whereas PM Ben-Gurion took on the U.S. when Israel was little more than a military pipsqueak, PM Netanyahu behaves as if Israel is a vassal state. This is the case even though he has at his disposal the most adept forces in the region, let alone technologically advanced. Hence, the question is not one of actual force strength, but one of inner and moral fortitude. Hmm.

At its base, the moment that PM Netanyahu conceded to a PA (terror) state (during his speech at Bar Ilan University in 2009, two and a half months into his tenure…regardless of how he framed it), the fact of the matter is that he gave Israel’s “kosher” stamp of approval to carve a 23 rd Arab state out of the Jewish heartland. This historical injury lands at his doorstep. Agreed, previous PM’s have been equally appeasing and beyond injurious, but the imprimatur for the above became cemented under his watch. No doubt.

Thus, he weakened Israel’s position within (already hostile, pro Arab) international forums, once he gutted the nation’s core standing. Realistically, are others supposed to be “more Catholic than the Pope”, so to speak? Not only that, why should they disagree with Israel’s PM, in effect, after he already conceded (his “reasoning” doesn’t count for a damn) to the “rights” of the so-called Palestinians? Unforgivable.

” As early as August 1968, Arafat defined the PLO’s strategic objective as “the transfer of all resistance bases” into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel during the June 1967 war, “so that the resistance may be gradually transformed into a popular armed revolution.” This, he reasoned, would allow the PLO to undermine Israel’s way of life by “preventing immigration and encouraging emigration … destroying tourism … weakening the Israeli economy and diverting the greater part of it to security requirements … [and] creating and maintaining an atmosphere of strain and anxiety that will force the Zionists to realize that it is impossible for them to live in Israel.”

The Oslo accords enabled the PLO to achieve in one fell swoop what it had failed to attain through many years of violence and terrorism. Here was Israel, just over a decade after destroying the PLO’s military infrastructure in Lebanon, asking the Palestinian organization, at one of the lowest ebbs in its history, to establish a real political and military presence—not in a neighboring Arab country but right on its doorstep. Israel even was prepared to arm thousands of (hopefully reformed) terrorists who would be incorporated into newly established police and security forces charged with asserting the PLO’s authority throughout the territories”…..

Unarguably, PM Netanyahu is the best orator on the world stage. He proved it on several occasions, most recently, at his speech to Congress on March 3, 2015. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, he is a highly gifted and polished communicator. But his commanding presence is both a byproduct of having been a special forces commando in Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal Unit (General Reconnaissance Staff), coupled with the natural confidence gleaned from being a top graduate of MIT, one of the most acclaimed universities in the world. Not too shabby, brawn and brains alike.

To wit, it is not unreasonable to posit (and to expect) that a man of his inestimable gifts should utilize them (unlike at the aforementioned Bar Ilan speech) to highlight ALL the reasons why a PA (terror) state is a non-starter, regardless of any cockamamie caveats of “demilitarization”, in and of itself an illegal demand! For heaven’s sake…

Conclusively, to round out the first part of my interview, let me leave the readers with the following concrete shout out: as to the charge sheet that PM Netanyahu is essentially spineless, I would like nothing more than to be proven wrong, as would millions of others. Intrinsically, he can redeem himself without any oratory flourishes, and this can be accomplished by veering into immediate “action-mode.”

IN other words, it is an “open secret” that Israel’s multi-tiered forces have been preparing for a strike for years, and all they required was a “ready, set, blow!” But we all know that didn’t happen. Yes, it is known that his prior IDF Chief, as well as the former Director of the Mossad, opposed a strike. So what? If PM Netanyahu wanted it done, it would have gone BOOM. Period.

IN any case, if one is more concerned with toeing HUSSEIN Obama’s line, isn’t it that much easier to convince the public that ones key Chiefs are against it and that is that, rather than stepping up as a leader and making the hardest decision of all – getting rid of the Iranian noose?

IF anything, it only demonstrates that past is prologue. Effectively, since PM Netanyahu didn’t have the balls to step up re Iran, how much more so re ISIS, as dictated by HUSSEIN Obama: Hands off!!